Hi, we are starting the Canadian migration process and are hoping to move over to Canada in 3 years from now. We are going for the skilled worker route and according to the various questionnaires we have enough points to move. However, we are currently paying off debt but may not have paid all the debt off in time. Will this stop us from moving (we will have saved up the capital amount though) or can we move to Canada with UK debt (and still continue to pay off the debt using a UK bank account). Many thanks!

Hi and welcome to the forum.

You can move with debts, that's no problem and your application won't be affected by them. You can just continue to pay them back from Canada.

If you apply now then you'll probably get your SW visas within approx 6-8 months (going on recent timescales, but 12 months at most), so you'll need your proof of funds saved up in that time if you haven't got it already.

Hope that helps, good luck.

Hi - thanks for the welcome and extra thanks for the super-quick response. It is good to know that we do not need to pay off all of our debt. We would love to move within the next 12 months but need to wait a bit longer as we want to make as clean a start as possible.

Would you confirm what is the current captial amount per adult?

It's per family member rather than just adults (just in case you have kids). Here's a link to the relevant CIC page.................http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigra...lled/funds.asp

It's usually said to be on the low side by the way, it's costing us (family of four plus dog and cat) approx £20k-25k to move over and that doesn't include things like buying cars, insurance, etc. That's much higher than the amount of proof of funds that CIC require, although obviously it depends on your circumstances - if you're a couple with few possessions then it'll be a lot cheaper for you!

Paying off UK debt in Canada can be annoying though. If you maintain a UK bank account you have to keep transferring money into it to pay stuff off and the exchange rate is always changing plus fees and all that. When I moved I got a loan in Canada and used it to pay off all the UK debt (graduate loan etc.) in one go and then just repay the loan locally and it made it way easier and less hassle.

This is the way to do it. You don't really want to be earning on currency and paying debt off in another - look at those poor sods in iceland with euro mortgages.